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Back Inside the Miracle Save as PDF
Chapters (103)
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Dedication
  4. Upon Seeking Tu Fu as a Guide
  5. To My Reader
  6. Enduring Suffering
  7. God, Self, and Medicine
  8. Willfulness
  9. In Voices Half as Loud
  10. Tu Fu’s Reappearance
  11. Without Notice
  12. The Waiting Room
  13. Endgame
  14. Questions to Walk With
  15. A Terrible Knowledge
  16. October Storm
  17. Post-Op
  18. Setting Fires in the Rain
  19. The Decision for Therapy
  20. Questions to Walk With
  21. Ocean of Sky
  22. For My Brother
  23. Covenant with Time
  24. As Rachel Wakes
  25. Dance of the Seed
  26. A Sacred Meditation
  27. Questions to Walk With
  28. Messenger Signs
  29. Where We Are Strong
  30. As If to Say
  31. Finding a Way Out
  32. Questions to Walk With
  33. Approaching Wholeness
  34. Troubled Waters
  35. Knowing God
  36. The Garage
  37. Living with the Wound
  38. Questions to Walk With
  39. Mind Sweats
  40. First Treatment
  41. Cradlesong
  42. Lifesong with Two Trumpets
  43. Letter Home
  44. Who Will Live Your Life?
  45. Questions to Walk With
  46. Midway in Our Journey
  47. Magnificence
  48. Another Chance
  49. Nesting
  50. I Have Not Forgotten
  51. On My Way
  52. Questions to Walk With
  53. Facing the River
  54. Being Human
  55. As Moonlight
  56. In the Back of the Eye
  57. In the Sea of Others
  58. Moonglow
  59. Chores
  60. Questions to Walk With
  61. Still Here, Still Wondering
  62. Unraveling the Self
  63. Cracked or Healing
  64. For Nur
  65. Love-Sufferings
  66. Soft as Satisfaction
  67. Letting Go
  68. Inside the Miracle
  69. Questions to Walk With
  70. Sifting Truth
  71. Susan Means Lily
  72. Sitting Near a Smoke Bush
  73. Sniffing For You
  74. Forged
  75. It
  76. Surviving Has Made Me Crazy
  77. For That
  78. Questions to Walk With
  79. Flint Work
  80. Entering Our Tenth Year
  81. Coming of Age
  82. After Mira
  83. Still
  84. What Can I Do?
  85. Love Your Window
  86. Hourglass
  87. Questions to Walk With
  88. The Bridge of Well-Being
  89. Adrift
  90. The Beauty of Less
  91. Between the Wall and the Flame
  92. Eventually
  93. Thrown Back
  94. The Slow Arm of All That Matters
  95. The Thin Magic
  96. In the Sky of Heart
  97. The Sway of It All
  98. Gratitudes
  99. Notes
  100. Permissions
  101. About the Author
  102. Also by the Author
  103. About Sounds True

•  In conversation with a friend or loved one, describe your experience of aging. What do you feel opening as you live longer?

•  In your journal, describe one aspect of your life that you would not trade with anyone and why. How does this aspect give you strength? How do you access it during times of stress and fear?

Flint Work

FLINT WORK

A Sufi master and his apprentice were traveling across the desert to a marketplace by the sea. Crossing the desert, the apprentice didn’t see much difference between himself and the master. To himself, the apprentice mused, it’s not as far to truth as I thought. But once in the marketplace, the apprentice couldn’t take a step clearly. He saw a beautiful woman from afar, and he wanted to touch her, and wrestling with his desire to touch her, he stopped experiencing her. Now he was fishing in the break of his heart, mourning the last love he’d known, wondering where she was. Then he saw an angry father strike his son, and everyone else kept walking by. Now he was feeling his anger at his own father and was no longer experiencing the street. Then, beyond the fish peddlers, a snake handler was dancing in the air, and the apprentice was now caught in his mother’s fear of snakes. When the master reached for the young man, it was as if he were reaching through a dark fog. The apprentice was startled. The master held his face and said, “When you can walk the city like a desert and the desert like a city, the sun will be your heart above you and your heart will be the sun inside you.”

Most of us live with the pressured thoughts of the apprentice lodged between who we are and our experience of the world. That is, our hurts, slights, questions, and discomforts build like a dark cloud between our soul and our way in the world. It is this natural and recurring buildup, when not released, that keeps us from directly experiencing life. The truth is that both the master and the apprentice are alive in each of us. The image of walking the desert without distraction, with nothing but the sun on our skin, is symbolic of unencumbered living. Of course, while in that moment, the unfiltered truth of life as we meet it seems handy, accessible, and easy to maintain.